Rating: 
Summary: Strikes A Nerve
Review: I too caught parts of this movie on cable recently, and had to rush out to rent it. Jack and Claire's love story gone wrong struck a nerve with me and had me wondering if they would finally find their way back together. Although the dialogue could have been a little fresher, particularly when Jack first started hitting on Claire, I wholly disagree with other reviewers who felt that Claire's motivations should have been fleshed out. This is a thinking-person's movie, plain and simple.The acting was very charismatic, no need to repeat how brilliant Adrien Brody is. I've seen Jon Seda's work on the TV show Homicide and have admired his talent for some time. I wish his character could have been developed a little further. August Diehl as Jeff was a little creepy, but cool. All in all, this movie was a hauntingly refreshing retreat from Hollywood cookie-cutter romantic flicks. At last a film where you're not sure if the leads will ride off together into the sunset.
Rating: 
Summary: Yo, Adrien!!
Review: I want to say to all of you, I had every intention of liking this movie. I have a soft spot for Adrien Brody's Bronx/Manhattan sadness. He reminds me of the good guys that I grew up with in Queens. He's probably one of the nicest guys in Hollywood right now and I was thrilled when he won for best actor last year at the Oscars. But let's face it:
This film was such a dog! You have to be desperately seeking art in any form to think this was even remotely interesting let alone entertaining. The only reason I didn't shut the DVD off in the first half hour was because of the respect I have for Brody. Yo, Adrien, be a little more judicious with the roles you pick and show a little more influence in who you costar with in the future, OK?
Rating:
Summary: Insanity
Review: It seems strangely coincidental that I saw this movie on cable late at night as well. Regardless of how I saw it, the movie was phenomenal in the sense it portrayed a form of reality in relationships, like "Requiem for a Dream" does. It is not a mushy lie and fabrication Hollywood innovated just to make you hope for a love that doesn't even exist like most romances. It portrays sacrifice between two lovers, a true and realistic sacrifice. But with such sacrifice comes sorrow, a deep seeded sorrow that seems irremovable by the end of the movie. It's up to you to watch it, obviously, but if you have loved and hurt before, it's the perfect cinematic piece of art to comfort your soul. I never thought a director could be so intelligent in the sense of seeing what love really means and then converting it into a piece of art.
Rating:
Summary: Alison
Review: It was a horrible scenario in many ways, robbing people, prostitution, suicide attempts, not exactly the things you would find in a happy movie, but the point of the movie is that love can be so powerful it can encompass everything. Claire, being the perfect girl, or what appeared to be perfect, was missing something. She was beautiful and intelligent, but when Jack came along, she fell so over the top in love, that he was the only thing that mattered to her. It was sad that her existence hinged on a person who destroyed her, but she couldn't help it, her heart lead her in a completely opposite direction and the fact that she could not truly have him turned her into a bitter and careless person. Love is supposed to be giving and real. When a person truly loves, they give themselves to another person and hope the other person takes care of their heart, only sometimes it is the wrong person and they never figure out how to love. This movie hit too close to home I think.
Rating: 
Summary: One for the fans
Review: It's interesting that this small movie has generated so many reviews, with such conflicting opinion of its merit or lack thereof, and I've just added mine to it.
Adrien Brody fans will like this movie, he plays a character similar but way cooler than in "Ten Benny", otherwise it is pretty ok, melodramatic in parts, kind of love story/character study piece with a definite plot and story arc, especially interesting for its edgy New York street setting, and cool hip-hop music. And that Adrien Brody of course.
Rating:
Summary: anonymous
Review: Let's just say Adrien Brody does a better job in this film than The Pianist. If you liked the Pianist then you have to see his performance in this film.
Rating:
Summary: "Why open the box if you know what's inside"
Review: Love the Hard Way, a homage to the mean streets of New York, is probably worth watching for Adrien Brody's richly nuanced performance as Jack, a petty criminal and small time hood who has a crisis of love. However, the movie as a whole, while beautifully produced and directed, has something of a crisis of identity. Love the Hard Way can't decide whether it wants to be a meditation on the rocky road to true love, or a statement about the exhilarations and risks of becoming caught up in the seedier side of life.
Juxtaposing the garbage-strewn streets of Brooklyn with the startling opulence and glamour of New York's ritzier hotels, Love the Hard Way follows Jack - complete with oily snakeskin coat - and his partners in crime, Charlie (Jon Seda a ringer for John Leguzamo), hotel receptionist Jeff (August Diehl), Pam (Liza Jessie Peterson), and Sue (Elizabeth Regan), as they work a prostitution-bust scam on Asian tourists. While Jeff clues them in on the guests, Jack and Charlie, dressed as police, raid hotel rooms catching the unsuspecting guests in the act with Pam and Sue masquerading as prostitutes. In exchange for various monies, the group offers not to press charges.
Jack is also a wannabe novelist, writing in a storage bin office in between scams. But this secure, fixed world is shattered, when he meets graduate student Claire (Charlotte Ayanna). Claire, a straight A student, is both transfixed and horrified by Jack's bent ways and unapologetic lifestyle of crime and women. But she loves him regardless, in fact she loves him so much that she's prepared to bed him on a whim and show her breasts to him at the lightest opportunity. While Claire describes her physics homework, Jack charms her with lines like "I'm majoring in pimping and petty blackmail."
Jack is rude, anti-establishment, and anti-social, and has grown up on the mean, gritty, urban streets, while Claire is middle-class and comes from a nice New England family. The thematic center of the story is what happens when both these totally dissimilar worlds inevitably collide. Of course, Claire ignores the advice of her best friend and continues to be seduced by Jack, only to be nastily and unceremoniously dumped by him later on. And this is where the story takes an improbable turn: Claire becomes lovelorn and obsessed, but not in a sympathetic way, and her actions are totally incongruent with her character. Rather than brushing the affair off to experience and finding a man more worthy of her, she tries to teach Jack a lesson, but at great cost to both Jack and herself.
The essential problem with Love the Hard Way is believability. The viewer is never totally convinced that a nice, respectable, and ambitious girl like Claire would fall for a man like Jack. There's no way she would come back for more after he has stood her up, slept with other women in front of her, and then summarily rejected her. Another problem is the casting of Charlotte Ayanna who is pretty, but kind of boring and she just doesn't look quite right next to Brody. Brody, however, with his puppy-dog eyes, gives a swaggering, brash performance that is absolutely spot-on. He is totally believable as a man who has been emotionally scarred by years of street living, yet underneath hides a sensitive, perceptive soul.
Love the Hard Way is supposed to be a passionate story about two people from different worlds who hold the key to each other. They have to go through tortured hell to find common ground and are emotionally exhausted at the end. True love is only found through enormous personal adversity, an adversity that, at times, isn't that convincing. The movie is certainly worth viewing though, and watch out for a sassy and feisty Pam Greer in a small supporting role as a street-wise undercover cop who wises up to Jack's escapades. Mike Leonard March 05.
Rating:
Summary: Some Revision Would Do You Good.
Review: Peter Sehr's Love the Hard Way is a clear example of what script revision can do for a film. Starring Adrien Brody, the film centers about a street con artist who, during the day, swindles people out of their money, and, in the night, develops his intellectual side--you know, writing crime novels and reading the best of poetry and literature. Brody saunters about throughout the film, wearing faux snakeskin jackets and wearing a hot pair of shades--straight pimp style. Well, it so happens that, one day, he meets a straight-laced college girl and the sparks just fly. Despite his roguish personality and villainous ways, she falls in love with him and can glimpse the sad academic beneath his scoundrel exterior. So it goes. ...But Jack doesn't want to be tamed by good girl, Claire. He still wants to live by the laws of the street--different girl every night, yes? This goes on for a while without Claire's knowing, but one day she walks into his apartment and finds him in bed with one of his hot colleagues. Claire snaps. She has a nervous breakdown. One day she's studying for some highfalutin biology exam, and the next she's selling her body on the street--all because of Jack's harsh--but real--ways. Jack broke Claire's heart. The surprise is, however, that she broke his, too. He starts going insane, as well. He sneaks around, following her, stealthily documenting each of her lewd encounters with the city's most lonely men [love the hard way, no?]. Of course, all works out well in the end. There's the plot for you. As you can see, a few rewrites might have done this gem some good. Yes, a few rewrites. The sad part is, though, that basically every aspect of this film is substandard. The female lead, Claire, was a poor choice. She couldn't handle her lines and couldn't really pull off the part. She was fairly dull. Brody, as Jack, was cast well, but he doesn't ever seem to be trying. The director, Peter Sehr, was nice. The color of this film was well done--many dark reds, blues, and yellows--street style. The writer, though, didn't get too many of his facts straight. In one scene, Jack is buying some first-edition books and asks for both "Melville and Pound." Jack should say, "Yes, yes. I'll read Moby Dick first, and afterward, The Cantos." Jack is supposed to be some sort of diamond in the rough--or genius in the rough, if you will--but his book [which we are lucky enough to catch a few excerpts from at the end] sounds like the biggest pile of crap. Some detective novel. It's sad, kind of. The movie could stand a few reasonable parings-down--perhaps thirty or forty minutes? Many cheesy scenes could be thus done away with, and perhaps, then, the film would start being presentable. To me, this movie seems to be only half-way finished, but instead of putting more time into it, the makers ran out of money and rushed it into distribution. If it would have only been critically revised a few more times, Love the Hard Way may actually have been able to have been a decent film.
Rating:
Summary: The soundtrack is one of the best supporting roles!
Review: The Chemistry between Brody and Ayanna on screen is so incendiary it makes me wonder... hmm good acting or off screen love affair.
Now, Brody is a great talent, given, but don't be star-struck there are stellar performances all about and some where you might not be looking.
((((SOUND))))
The soundtrack, music primarily composed by Me and the Other Guy aka Didi Gutman and Rahj is the best supporting role of all, providing a lovely and melodic groove throughout, with velvety vocals and bitter sweet lyrics that cut to the core. It draws you in and propels the most pivotal scenes elevating great performances to even greater heights. If you're curious about it seek out ontourrahj for the scoop.
The characters are presented with all the complexities of humanity; there is no black and white, good and evil. It's A-Typical of homogenized Hollywood love stories so step off the soap box and get off your high horse, be warned it's amoral there is no "lesson to be learned" it's not an after school story, it's told straight, in full color saturation. It's the dark side of love, destructive and co-dependent. trying to love and be loved with a broken heart, the terrible things we do to each other and ourselves for want of love. Some people may not be able to relate and scoff, good for them, they walk through the world without scars.
OK, it could be darker in tone, a more prevalent time-line would have helped, the DVD has no subtitles to support the lack of verbal sound quality, the cigarette burns are apparent, none the less the story is real and deserves your attention.
Rating: 
Summary: Devastating but excellent film
Review: This film really broke my heart. It is not a perfect film, but it was very emotionally stirring for me, in the vein of Leaving Las Vegas. I agree with the previous comment about NYC. Overall, I highly reccomend this movie, but not if want a happy film.
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